


Ex Cathedra

by fannishliss



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: sammessiah, Gen, sammy is the demon messiah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam is first in line for the throne of Hell, but the brothers aren't going to let something like that tear them apart ever again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ex Cathedra

**title: Ex Cathedra**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/)**fannishliss**    
length: 4378 words  
rated: pg  
pairing: gen, brotherly love  
warnings:  Slightly AU, spoiler for 6.19; sacrilegious use of a real Cathedral in Detroit (deepest apologies)  
recipient: randomfan93 for Antchristmas 2011 fic exchange  -- hope you enjoy it!

Summary: Sam is first in line for the throne of Hell, but the brothers aren't going to let something like that tear them apart ever again.

~*0*~

The first time a demon showed up and knelt to Sam, pleading for him to take his throne and save them all, Dean lost his shit and knifed the bad boy before he’d finished his opening obeisance.

Sam saw the whites of Dean’s eyes and knew this was not the sort of thing that Dean was going to take to easily.

The second time, Sam had hidden the knife at the bottom of his duffel, so Dean started cursing and punching and exorcising, all the while throwing Sam the most baleful looks Sam had seen since that time in the hotel room when he left Dean for Ruby.  Sam just looked at the prostrate demon and said go, and it didn’t help matters, that the demon simply turned its stolen head and said, “Yes, Lord,” vacating in a quiet stream of smoke before Dean had even wrapped his tongue around  “exorcisamus te.”

This occasioned a week of Dean shooting constant sideways glances at Sam, draining bottles of Jack in their room every night, and ignoring Sam’s attempts to find them a nice Hunt to clear the air, while at the same time driving them ragged from town to town hundreds of miles apart every day, as though Lucifer himself were still hot on their heels, instead of being one half of a six-month-old double-archangel shaped negative on the floor of a warehouse in Detroit.

Still, something in Sam called out to the demons. They had no problem tracking down their Lord no matter how silkily his brother’s sleek lady carried them around the country like they were tracing the points of a handful of devil’s traps thrown down slightly out of synch.

So it happened that they were in Iowa when the next set of demons -- a blonde (desk clerk), a brunette (college student in an Iowa State t shirt) and a redhead (professional woman in comfortable Chico’s) found them.  Anonymous motel room, nicer than normal because Dean was too unravelled to lower them to his usual standards.  Dean was sprawled out on Sam’s bed, the one farthest from the door, because he was eating a horrible basket of chili cheese fries and he didn’t like the smell the grease always left on his own covers, when the door to their room slid open, and the three possessed women slipped in and stuttered to a halt.

Dean placed the basket of fries on the nightstand and pulled his own gun out from under his own pillow in one silken  move.   Sam had Hunted with Dean nearly his whole life, but still, his brother could impress him.

The three women stood locked together in a tight huddle on the rug just inside the door.  Dean had gotten sick of repainting the damn traps everywhere they went -- he’d just found an old entry rug at a Goodwill and inscribed the trap on the bottom in permanent marker.  Now they still had to line every entry with salt, but the trap they just carted in with their duffels and unrolled.

 “Please, Lord,” the redhead said.

“Rule us,” chimed the blonde.

“The chaos in Hell will soon spill over,”  the brunette warned.

These were the least together demons ever.  One thing you could usually count on with demons, at least, was their cheeky, “devil may care” attitude, maybe leading to the origin of the phrase. But these demons were clearly desperate, pleading with Sam with their eyes and largely ignoring the rage pouring off of Dean with his clenched jaw and his belligerent, heavy-lidded glare -- the glare Sam knew was the last straw before Dean started taking things apart.  

“Sam,”  Dean warned, furious that demons were sharing air with him and his brother.

“Dean,” Sam returned.  At the very least they needed to know what the demons were up to.

Sam stared at Dean till Dean looked away.  Sam had two minutes.  He could work with that.

“What do you want?”

“Sam, you’re the rightful King,” the brunette said.

“We need you,” the blonde moaned.  The three demons were packed pretty tightly into that trap.

“The petty lords are devouring one another. The newly damned are laid out as a banquet.”

“So?”  Dean barked.  “What do we care if a bunch of demons kill each other?”

Sam wasn’t seeing the problem either.  The demons frowned at him in a kind of reverent frustration.

“Haven’t you learned anything?” the demon in the college student sneered at Dean.  Her face softened when she turned back to Sam.

“Every demon devoured gives a little more power to the devourer -- right, Sam?”  The three demons eyes flowed inky black as they gazed at Sam in adoration.  Dean’s face, if possible, went even stonier.

Sam remembered that power, flowing into him, feeding him.  His body had become dependent on that unnatural surge of energy, even as it fought to expel the taint.   Without a corporeal form to suck at the power and struggle against it, demons could amass huge amounts of energy to use at will.

“Are you saying these devourers are all gonna be as powerful as I was?” Sam gasped.

“Yes,” the blonde said.

“And no,” the redhead said.

“You’re special, Sam.  You’re meant to be King.  You can take in the power of a demon without it taking you over.” 

Sam heard Dean give a sharp exhalation out through his nose, and still that wave of sick remorse swept through him. 

“Maybe it didn’t take over, but it had its influence,” Sam murmured. 

“In a demon, the force of will is the demon itself,”  the brunette said.  “If I devour another demon, we fight for dominance.  Even if I win, I’m just forcing the other demon down.  But say I devour another and another.  What remains?”

“A hydra,” the redhead said.

“A hydra?” Dean said, eyebrows lifting a little with interest. “We still have that sword,”  he said to Sam.

The demons ignored Dean. “A thousand wills, all ravenous, all fighting for dominance,” the blonde said, and shuddered.

 Sam understood. “A thousand demons, fused into one entity, incredibly powerful and completely insane.” 

“Yes, Lord,”  the redhead said.

“Please,” said the brunette, “don’t let them devour us.”

“How many of them are there?”  Sam asked, horror rising up inside him.  All Hell, focusing itself into some kind of chaotic ponzi scheme?

“We don’t know.  We fled,”  the blonde answered.

“Thanks a lot for the intel,”  Dean snapped.

“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?”  Sam asked, suddenly angry.  The fate of the world just wouldn’t leave them alone.  It was always about them.  It royally sucked.

“Devour them,”  the blonde said.

“Devour them,” the redhead said.

“Devour the devourers, before they destroy us all, demons and humans alike,” the brunette said.

Sam jerked back.  “No!” he shouted.

Dean stared at him, appalled.

“You can’t, Sammy,” he said, his heart in his voice, broken.  Sam never wanted to hear that sound again. 

“I won’t, Dean, I swear it,”  Sam said. 

“You must,” said the redhead.

“You have to stop the devourers,” said the blonde. 

“You’re the only one who can,” said the brunette.  “And it’s almost too late.   The gates are weak with the throne unclaimed.  The only reason the devourers are still in Hell is that they can’t tear themselves away from glutting on the power of the weak.”

“But I can’t,” Sam said.  “I can’t drink demon blood again.  It nearly destroyed me -- who I really am.  I won’t do it again.” 

“You have to take your throne,” the blonde said.  “As King of Hell, you can strengthen the gates.” 

“When you’re King, all demons in Hell and on Earth will do your bidding,” the redhead answered.

“And no one said anything about blood,” the brunette smiled, her black eyes eerie in the grinning face.  “Take up your power, and you can disperse these demons with a thought. Take up your power, and all their power will belong to you.”

“What do they mean, Sam --take up your power? What does that mean?”  Dean shouted. 

“I don’t know!” Sam answered. 

“Take the throne, my Lord,” said the brunette, “and you will be King of Hell, as you were born to be.”

The two minutes were up, and Dean began rolling off the syllables of the exorcism more smoothly than Sam had ever heard from him.  He must have practiced it for hours.   After the three confused women left the room with promises not to speak of what had happened ever again, Dean turned to Sam and simply looked at him.

“Sam,”  he said, and wiped his hand over his face.

“Okay, Dean, it’ll be okay.  Look, we’ll figure this out together, okay? We’ll figure it out.” Sam knew he was babbling, but anything to get that look off his brother’s face.

“But so, so what then.  You’re actually thinking about... you’re gonna...”  Dean couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“Lord of Hell, Dean. I mean, it couldn’t be worse than being locked in the cage with Lucifer.  Could it?” Sam started out with a flourish of false confidence, but it failed him before the end of the sentence.

“King of Hell?  King of all the demons?  Devour the devourers?”  Dean yelled, incredulous.

“Dean, stop it.  Let’s just try to think about this for a minute,” Sam begged.

Dean swayed a little, his eyes closing.  “How many times I gotta do this, Sammy,” he whispered, “watch you sacrifice yourself... fall back into the Pit....  Jesus Christ, Sam.  How many times?”

“It’s me or the whole god damned world, Dean.  Again.” 

Dean closed his eyes, his whole body a picture of defeat.

With a quiet flap of wings, Castiel appeared in the room.

“Dean, Sam.  It’s been a while,” Castiel said, awkward as ever.

“I didn’t pray for you,” Dean spat. “I didn’t!” he repeated to Sam.

“You did, and I am here.  What do you need?”  Castiel was just as earnest as ever, despite what Sam thought of as the Saga of the Soul-Eating Libel that had almost ended with Dean’s stolen Angel sword through Castiel’s throat.  Dean and Cas had declared a truce, and they’d won the war, but Dean was still nursing his hurt with the Angel.

Dean just said, “I am way too sober for this,” and got out the whiskey he’d purchased for that day.

“What do you know about Hell these days, Cas?”  Sam asked.  It was a touchy subject, since Castiel had been working with Crowley during the war and had deceived them about it.  

“Heaven demands almost all of my attention,” Castiel said, “with the New Rulemaking, legions of Angels petitioning...” 

“Always knew you were a holy tax accountant,” Dean snarked. 

“... but we have noticed some unusual activity at the Gates,” Castiel continued.  “I have sentries posted.”

“You must have missed a few then, because demons are dogging Sam pretty hard,” Dean said.

Castiel’s gaze fixed on Sam like a laser, and Sam was reminded uncomfortably of Heaven and the searchlight that had been Zachariah’s regard.

“Why do they seek you out, Sam?”  Castiel said, staring. His people skills had gotten rusty again.

“They say I have to stop the devourers -- demons that are eating other demons to gain power -- by taking the throne of Hell.”  Sam could hardly say it, but Castiel was their most powerful ally.  Maybe he and the Angels could handle the demon problem without Sam becoming King of Hell.

Sam breathed out as Castiel dropped his gaze, but when the Angel looked up again his eyes were full of shame and regret.

“No Angel can help you, Sam.  So much power ... an Angel would go mad ... and be nearly unstoppable.”  When Castiel looked up, the power of his grace was glinting in his eyes in a way that made Sam very uncomfortable.  “You have to stop them, Sam.  It can only be you.”

Sam felt like he was in a nightmare, like he was sinking under the surface of an icy black lake, with no hope of coming up for air.

“God damn it, Cas -- if this is what you call help, get the hell out of here!” Dean shouted.

Castiel looked sorrowfully at his old friend.  “As you wish,” he breathed, and vanished.

Dean looked at Sam, and Sam looked back.  “No, no, no.  No.  Just, no.”  Dean said.

“What choice do I have, Dean?  Sit back and wait till these schizophrenic mega-demons break out of Hell? and then the Angels go supernova and form a legion of Lucifers?”

“No,” Dean said, but it was half-hearted. “Damn it, Sam.  Why does it always have to be us?” 

Sam shrugged.  He pulled out his laptop and flipped it open.

“Dude, how do you google for ‘take the throne of Hell’?”  Dean muttered.  “I’m going out for more whiskey,” he said, and he was gone.

A week later, they were in Detroit again.

“God, I’m really starting to hate this town,” Dean complained.  It was around 3 am and quiet in the neighborhood of the cathedral.  The Impala cruised to a halt in a dimly lit section of parking lot behind the stone building.

Dean shouldered their duffel, muttering. “It’s a heist.  Just like any other heist.  Except if we pull it off, you’ll be King of Hell.”   Sam just followed, silent.

Sam had sworn he wouldn’t drink any blood or jump into any Pit, and that had calmed Dean down considerably. Focusing on taking down the devourers helped Dean think of it as just another Hunt. Sam had played down the number of demons involved in the little ritual they were about to perform, so he hoped Dean wouldn’t freak out.

The cathedral’s security system, installed only a few years ago, was like an open book to Dean.  He had it disabled in less than half an hour and they made their way into the nave.

“Churches at night, man.  Never not creepy,”  Dean said, his eyes wide, as light glittered on the facets of the night-dark stained glass reaching up around them.

The bishop’s seat was built of stone, right into the wall of the church near the altar.  It was a modern design, reminding Sam of the Last Supper by Salvador Dali that he’d studied in Art History.  Sam was kind of sorry that what they were about to do would be seen as vandalism, and was pretty much the definition of desecration, but it couldn’t be helped. The cathedra in Detroit had been blessed by the Pope himself less than ten years earlier, and that kind of religious resonance was too perfect an opportunity to pass up.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Sam said.

Dean opened his duffel and handed Sam his scythe.  “I can’t believe you still have this thing,” he muttered. 

“I like it,” Sam said. Dean had given the scythe to Sam for his seventeenth birthday, after a Romany woman in upstate New York told him it was made for his brother’s hand.    It was the one weapon, besides his Buck knife, he’d taken with him to Stanford. 

Sam took the scythe in his left hand.  Climbing up onto the arm of the seat, he could just reach the point of the throne with the tip of the scythe.  In a counterclockwise fashion, undoing, Sam dragged the point of the scythe in the seam between it and the wall, as though he were marking it off.  Careful not to break the line, he traced the entire perimeter of the throne, down to the bottom of the dais it sat upon, around the front, switched the scythe into his right hand, and continued tracing the edge of the seat up again to the very top.  When he was finished, Sam sank down and tried to make himself comfortable on the cold throne. 

Dean got out his sawed-off and one of the old blankets they carried in the back seat of the Impala. This one was army surplus green where it wasn’t stained brown from their blood. Dean folded it into a square and knelt down on it to the left of Sam’s feet, sawed-off held tight in both hands.

“I’m not cool with the kneeling,” Dean grumbled, but he did it anyway.

Sam placed his left hand on his brother’s shoulder.  “Ready?”  he said, and he felt Dean’s answer as Dean breathed out.

“As I’ll ever be.  Good luck, Sammy,”  he said.

“Thanks, Dean,” Sam said.  He cleared his mind and said to the demons, Come.

They didn’t have to wait long.  The cathedral was dark except for a few security lights around the entrances. The soft spitting of electrical connections briefly overloading announced the coming of the demons.  They’d left their meatsuits behind-- tonight, they were needed for something else.

The clouds of smoke shot toward them from every crack and crevice, rushing into the nave and approaching Sam on his throne.  His hands tightened convulsively, his right hand on the scythe and his left on Dean’s shoulder. 

“Sammy,”  Dean muttered. 

“No, no, Dean, it’s okay,”  Sam said, fervently hoping he was right.

The demons pulled up short as they came near to Sam and Dean, stopping at the edges of the throne.  They appeared to worry at the invisible line Sam had traced with the scythe, as though they were trying to separate the throne from its moorings in the wall and the tiled marble floor.   As more and more demons arrived, the cloud became opaque and obscured their vision of the rest of the cathedral.  Sam kept his left hand tight on Dean’s shoulder as Dean trembled beneath him, tensing to spring up and start firing.

“Almost, Dean, almost,” he said.

“How many freaking demons did you call, Sam?”  Dean muttered.

“All of them,” Sam said quietly.

“What!”  Dean said, but Sam’s grip on his shoulder kept him down.  The stench of sulphur filled their noses as the demonic cloud thickened around them, sparking slightly and giving off a roar like distant thunder of the rushing of wind.

“All of them, Sam?” Dean exclaimed.

“Hold on, Dean, okay?”  Sam said.

The demons roiled and surged around them.  The line Sam had scratched into the marble grew deeper as the demons harried it and delved into it.  With a crack, the marble gave way and the throne gave a jolt as the demons surged underneath them into the floor and into the stone wall behind them.  Sam gripped Dean’s shoulder viciously, but the dais Dean knelt on was part of the throne itself.  The demons forced their way until they formed a solid sphere all around the cathedra Sam and Dean had appropriated.

“Say it,”  Sam said.

We have no voices with which to speak, the demons crackled in his mind.

“Dean, you ready?”  Sam asked again.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and addressing the demons, he said, “Use my voice -- use me.”

Sam lifted the scythe and Dean brought it to his chest, scratching lightly across the tattoo. As Dean’s  blood welled up, bisecting the trap, delicate tendrils, hair-thin, reached out from every demon surrounding them, caressing Dean.

“Sammy! Sammy!  Oh, god, don’t let them take me!” Dean screamed, panicking, but he was defenseless, and the tendrils, hundreds of them, sank into him through the pores of his skin.

Dean’s body convulsed, arching backwards into Sam’s grip.  His mouth flew wide in a silent scream as his eyes squeezed shut.

“Don’t you hurt him, don’t you dare!” Sam thundered at the demons, but he couldn’t drive them back until they spoke through Dean.

We aren’t hurting him, we love him.  We love him so much, Sammy, the demons crackled.  Sam suddenly understood -- the demons were racking Dean with pleasure, electrifying his every nerve with their need to serve their Lord.

“Say my name!” Sam roared, desperate, as Dean struggled to breathe, his body shaking with the incarnate bliss of the thousand invaders.

“Samuel Campbell Winchester!” roared the voice of the legion through Dean’s throat.  “You are our rightful Lord, the king of Hell, and we have taken this for your throne!”   Sam felt a warmth all around him and saw that the veins of the marble throne were glowing with demonic energy. With a mighty crack, the throne and its dais tore free from its moorings as the demons took possession of it.

Sam knew about  the switch inside his brain; he had delicately toggled it a few times before, and the demon blood had made a short circuit around it;  but now, the full power of his inheritance unlocked and the switched slammed open like the power supply of a mad scientist bringing his creature to glorious, unholy life.

Sam could feel each and every demon like an extension of his own nervous system.  He felt them as they played inside Dean like shrieking children, and he could feel Dean too, seized with an  ecstasy almost agony, as his brain was overloaded by the demons’ delight.

The demons lifted Dean up at Sam’s command, placing him in his brother’s arms.  Sam let the scythe fall to the floor with a clang, where it joined the sawed-off that had fallen from Dean’s nerveless fingers.

Tenderly, Sam drew the demons out of his brother, slowly so that he didn’t go into shock.  With a shudder Dean drew a shaky breath, another, and then let forth an ecstatic scream that resounded against the marble walls of the cathedral. Sam felt the echoes of Dean’s pleasure in his own mind, and he remembered the dark joys of demonic ecstasy only too well,  but he knew that Dean had to be released. One by one the demons let go of Dean, pulling free as he convulsed and wept with bliss in Sam’s arms.

“Sam, Sammy,” Dean groaned, only half-conscious, and in his mind, Sam heard the demons echoing, Lord, Sam, Our King.

Sam felt the demons stirring in the veins of the marble seat.  They were part of the throne now, and it would be Sam’s forever.

Dean stirred, and Sam ran a soothing hand down his back. 

“Holy shit, Sam,” Dean muttered, struggling to open his eyes.

“Good times,” Sam said. 

One eye managed to crack open. “Sticky,” he said, wiggling a little.

“TMI, Dean, god,” Sam said. “Open your eyes.”  The other eye slowly pulled open, and both Dean’s beautiful green eyes fought to focus, a little cross-eyed, on his brother.

“Did it work?”  Dean said. 

“Yeah,” Sam said, staring down at Dean.

“We done, then?”  Dean asked.

“Not quite,”  Sam said.

“Can you stop with the staring?  You’re like Cas or something,”  Dean said.

Sam wondered if Castiel stared at Dean so much because the Angel could see what Sam was seeing now -- a conduit leading from the center of Dean’s shining once-demonic soul, straight down into Hell. 

“Hold still, Dean-- hold on to me and don’t let go,” Sam said. 

“Sam? What?”  Dean said, but Sam was already tripping, falling down the tenuous thread of bronze that tied Dean’s soul to the rack he’d made his own in Hell.

Sam was standing on the rack, Dean’s rack, Dean’s rusty razors sticking up out of the charnel all around it.  With a twist of Sam’s hand,  the rack was clean, and Dean’s blades lay waiting, gleaming like stars, should they ever again be needed.

Sam called, and the devourers, greedy, rushed toward him. Just as the demons had warned, they were hydras, parts of them straining for freedom even as the dominant demons forced them into submission.  Sam opened his arms to them, encompassing them, and simply took their power for himself.  They dissolved without a scream, without a fight, falling to Sam because he, as King of Hell, willed it to be so.  Sam finished the devourers, soaking them up, and his power was limitless, filling him endlessly, ready, like Dean’s knives, whenever it was needed.

“The Lord of Hell has taken up his power and has ascended his throne.  I am King of Hell!”  Sam roared and all Hell gave back one long howl of assent.

Sam accepted the fealty of the demons of Hell.   He tested the gates and found them secure.  With a brush of his awareness across each demon, Sam acknowledged that they were his now, eyes and ears, spies and footsoldiers, his to care for and command.  He lay his hand on the rack for a moment, and Sam saw that part of his throne was Dean’s rack, and part of the power he had taken up flowed from a source at the center of Dean’s soul.

Then he looked up and followed the brazen thread up and out of the green sea of Dean’s eyes. 

“Sam? What?” Dean was saying, his eyes darkening in concern.

“That’s all, Dean.  It’s done,”  Sam said. 

Dean frowned, but nodded. “Dude, I don’t think I can walk,” Dean said, stretched across Sam’s lap.

Sam set Dean on his feet, holding him up as he wobbled until he got his bearings.

Sam dropped the blanket and the sawed-off into the duffel, and swung it onto his shoulder.  He picked up the scythe, and it rang with a metallic sound as it left the marble floor.  It felt good in his hand.  He put his other arm around Dean’s shoulder to steady him, and that felt good too.  Together, they left the cathedral, hollow where the bishop’s seat had been.

 

 


End file.
